rose.parks(a)att.net wrote:
I have been hoping that someone else would bring
up the issue
of accessibility in Wikipedia. Yet, having read over 20 e-mails on
the problem of our many and multi-colored links, I saw no mention of
this issue.
I fully agree with Ruth Ifcher that this should be a priority, and
that we should stick to display standards that are simple and
functional rather than beautiful.
I think at this stage in Wikipedia's
development, some of the
basic accessibility features might be incorporated in our software -
like not depending on color coding to convey information, and adding
descriptions to all images. I am strongly in favor of such
features. Unfortunately, my programming skills are not nearly strong
enough to try to add any. Hopefully, some of the developers will
agree that accessibility is important and will be willing to work on
adding some of these features.
In my opinion, you are absolutely right. This is something that would
be easy to forget, but the wikipedia mission of open education for all
is consistent _only_ with efforts to bring our work to everyone in as
fully accessible a manner as possible.
Ruth, I encourage you to keep complaining about this, lest we forget!
--Jimbo